Lucy Mayorga- Part 2
Interviewed by Delia Munoz
Camera by Susan McGlothlin
April 10, 2012
Muñoz: Emilio.
Mayorga: Okay, we were having a class together, and I had to dissect a frog, and there was no way I was going to dissect a frog, so he did the dissecting for me. We sat next to each other, and we became friends then. He was one of the line, because I dated a lot, different boys, had fun. I wasn’t attached to anybody. And then I think it was like that with him for about a year or so, and then we started going out more steady, and became more and more. And then he went to the service. I was a senior, and he missed his senior year.
Muñoz: He missed his senior year?
Mayorga: Uh-huh. So then when he came back, he gave me an engagement ring for my birthday.
Muñoz: Oh my goodness!
Mayorga: And my birthday is the fifteenth of February, and Emilio’s is the fourteenth. And we went down to the courthouse-crazy kids in high school-we knew Mrs. Schmidt [phonetic] in the Records Department, and she looked it up for us. He’s here, and you turn the page, and I’m registered right next to him. So when I’d get mad, he’d say, "Don’t be so stubborn, we’re meant for each other, we’re meant to be together." I’d say, "No we’re not! No we’re not! I’m not ready!" But we dated for about two and a half, three years, then he went to the service, came back, and he asked me, "Are you ready?" I said, "I think so." And so he gave me an engagement ring for my birthday. And then I told him, "Well, we don’t have money or anything. We have to wait until September or October before we can have money." I was working at Sears then. I was giving all my money to Mom. That’s the way we grew up. You earned the money, you gave it for the household. And so I made a deal with Mom, I said, "You can have every other paycheck. How’s that?" She said, "Okay." I said, "I have to start getting things." I thought we were going to get married around October, and he said, "I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s get married!" "You’re crazy!" So we got married in April. (laughter) So we had to rush and fix the house in the back. But we had a small wedding.
Muñoz: I was just going to ask, compared to what your wedding was like, describing your wedding, it was small.
Mayorga: Well, compared to what they have now, my God! I wasn’t even going to have that big a wedding. We were just going to get married, and Mom was going to make Mexican chocolate and Mexican bread and we were going to have that at home. And then his mother insisted that we had to have a bigger wedding. Oh God, we didn’t have money. I wasn’t going to spend money feeding other people when we needed....
~00:03:02
Muñoz: You sound like my husband!
Mayorga: Well, I mean, we didn’t have the money, so why go feed a multitude of people that you’d see once a year? I guess I’m horrible, but that’s the way I was. And so we had a bigger wedding, but it was just my sister and my brother-in-law were the important ones, and then I had his sister and Margie Martinez, Teeny’s sister. You remember Teeny, Socorro’s husband?
Muñoz: Yeah.
Mayorga: Well, his sister. That’s all that was in our wedding. Oh, and Vera and Richard. We just had a small dinner at the church, and that was it. We went to Grand Canyon for our honeymoon.
Muñoz: Where did you stay?
Mayorga: I don’t even remember the motel anymore. But we had to come back, Emilio had to go to work. So it was nice, because the people that went, you knew them. You had something really in common, they weren’t just names out of a phone book, you know. I never liked big doings. Socorro had a small wedding too-my sister. My brother had a nice one in New Mexico. He got married in New Mexico.
Muñoz: Is his wife from New Mexico?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: So baptismals, was that something small, like the wedding, as well?
Mayorga: Well, I was terrible. When I had my daughter, Ruth and Charlie Goitia were very good friends, and they had already had a child, and we baptized her. And I don’t know where he thought he was going to baptize ours, but I wanted my mom and my dad, so they took her to be baptized during the week. (chuckles) Father baptized her during the week, and we didn’t have anything, it was just us. I just wanted her baptized. But my dad was of the old style, he came in with a speech. I had no idea what he was saying to me. (in Spanish) "La embra que estos santos tener recibido." Oh my God, what do I say, Dad? Thank you. Daddy was very political, with all that tradition that they did. I had no idea what he was telling me in Spanish, but I said thank you. But we didn’t have anything when we baptized Yoli.
Muñoz: Because it’s very different nowadays, huh?
Mayorga: I mean, the baby doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s just for the parents. I guess it’s good, I don’t know. I’ve never been one for big doings like that. I like close family.
Muñoz: That’s more of the traditional part, when it’s all about family.
Mayorga: Well that’s what I think. But to go and invite a hundred people....
Muñoz: And feed 'em.
Mayorga: Feed 'em and then clean up? Oh God!
Muñoz: Too much work.
Mayorga: Too much work.
Muñoz: As you were growing up, when someone passed away, the wakes, do you remember them being at home, or at the church?
Mayorga: Oh God, I remember one. The people lived at, what was it, section or whatever they carried.
Muñoz: Oh, yeah, the section housing over here off of Milton.
Mayorga: Up by the underpass and all that. Okay, well, my mom and my dad had a very good friend there, and he passed away. And my God, that wake or whatever it was, was all night long! I remember they had a fire outside. All the men were drinking out there.
Muñoz: Celebrating, huh?
Mayorga: Yeah. And I couldn’t believe it, because I know my mom stayed with her for ages. After school I had to go from training school up to that section house, because my mom was staying with the lady during the nights and stuff like that. I guess they were very close friends, because the lady came and stayed with us for months and months.
Muñoz: What did her husband die of? [unclear]
Mayorga: But I remember the Fajardos up there. That’s where I got to know them.
Muñoz: And you know, Raymundo Ceballos lived in that section housing up there as well.
Mayorga: Well I knew the Fajardos and everyone else I knew from up there, because the man was sick for quite a while, so Mother stayed up there and helped take care of him. But I remember the wakes were forever, and when my uncle died, my Uncle Elias-that horse killed him-they had the wake at the mortuary. But they were there forever, all night long too. They put us to sleep in a little room, because we were young, we weren’t gonna stay up. I must have been about ten when my uncle died. But I don’t go for that stuff.
Muñoz: For the rosary and stuff?
Mayorga: Well, I think if you just say a mass for them.... I don’t like eulogies. I just don’t like 'em. I was very upset....
Muñoz: You were telling me that you had requested....
Mayorga: I had requested we didn’t have any, because Emilio and I had talked about it, and both of us said no. And we had it!
Muñoz: Whether you wanted it or not.
Mayorga: Yep.
Muñoz: Processions and funerals at that time, like during that man’s time-that would be 1938, if you were ten years old-at that time how did they carry or have the funeral service? Did they have cars by then?
Mayorga: You mean like carry them to the cemetery?
Muñoz: Right, carry them to the cemetery.
Mayorga: I don’t remember ever going to the cemetery.
Muñoz: Do you remember where the cemetery was when you were a young person?
Mayorga: I don’t think it was where it’s at now, because I think it was over there by my aunt, Tia Concha’s house, further out. I think that’s where the cemetery was.
Muñoz: Well, there was a cemetery there alright.
Mayorga: Up on the hill.
Muñoz: Uh-huh, on O’Leary Street.
Mayorga: Yeah. I remember the cemetery, but I remember that they used to call it....
Muñoz: Calaveras.
Mayorga: Calaveras, yeah. Because I used to ask permission if I could go and play over there. We baptized a doll, believe it or not! We had a ceremony.
Muñoz: How many people did you invite to that?
Mayorga: Just the Martinezes, the ones that have the restaurant-Ramona Martinez and her brother. They were my padrinos. We had the ceremony, the whole bit.
Muñoz: And you were just a kid, huh?
Mayorga: Yeah, we were just little kids. We’d make houses on the dirt with a stick. The little flowers were the eggs. We didn’t have dishes, we didn’t have anything, but we had a lot of good times just pretending.
Muñoz: Yeah, good imaginations.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. So Mike was always my compadre. (laughter) He was my compadre. Ramona was my comadre. When we’d see each other in high school, you know. And that was from childhood, because they lived across from us then. And then they moved up to O’Leary. And we used to go up and ask for permission up there.
Muñoz: Okay. So they lived....
Mayorga: The Martinezes lived further down, by where my in-laws lived. Is that O’Leary?
Mayorga: Yeah, O’Leary, you go down to O’Leary, and your in-laws would live in Benton. But you’re going up the street to Calaveras on O’Leary Street. And then down in that area was the cemetery.
Mayorga: Uh-huh, I remember that. But I hardly had any occasion to go. I guess nobody that I knew was dying. Or if they died, I didn’t go.
Muñoz: How about a mortuary, do you remember a mortuary?
Mayorga: When my uncle died, they left us alone at the mortuary, and they went across to the Chinese restaurant to have breakfast. I guess we were all sleeping. I just remember being scared to death being there with a casket.
Muñoz: Yeah, really. Downtown?
Mayorga: It was downtown on ... Aspen?
Muñoz: Uh-huh, San Francisco and Aspen by the Monte V., huh?
Mayorga: Yeah, further down.
Muñoz: Monte Vista.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. That’s the only mortuary that I remember, because I never went to funerals.
Muñoz: Kind of kept away from that, huh?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Okay, you mentioned the Jamaica with your mom. She was kind of the coordinator of the Jamaica?
Mayorga: She started it. She wrote to my grandmother, and my grandmother gave her ideas what they did in Mexico. So the first Jamaica they were gonna have, they were gonna have on San Francisco Street. So my dad was working for the light company, so they gave him permission, they gave him all the equipment, for him and his coworker to put lights all on San Francisco, from the tracks down to by where the Villapandos lived-I think that far down. But then the weather started getting bad.
Muñoz: What month was this, do you remember?
Mayorga: I don’t remember. But I think we’d get the spring rains, or early rains, and it was undecided, so most of the people decided they should have it at the armory. But then there were a couple of stubborn people that puestos on San Francisco Street anyway. But they changed it to the armory. But they were gonna have it on the street, like they used to have it in Mexico, because everybody had the little stations in Mexico, and that’s the way it was gonna be on San Francisco Street. And then they were gonna have like a street dance.
Muñoz: And those stations, were they where they can get through?
Mayorga: Puestos, yeah. And everybody would have food and you could buy it. But there were two or three people that got a little stubborn, but the rest of them went to the armory.
Muñoz: Okay, because I remember the Jamaica at the armory, and I remember it at the basement. Actually, it was outside of the church in the Our Lady of Guadalupe, within the parking lot and partly over where that santo is.
Mayorga: Well maybe I was in Cottonwood by then.
Muñoz: Maybe. But that’s the way it was when I was a little girl. Okay, what do you remember about the Fourth of July?
Mayorga: The powwow. Oh, the parades! We have it on tape. Emilio took it on tape. And Danny, my nephew, hitched a ride on one of the wagons with the Indians, so we have him on tape there. Michael has all my tapes. He’s going to convert them to CDs. I know he hasn’t had time. Emilio was crazy about taking pictures of any [unclear], always. We used to do the photography at home. We had a darkroom at home. So we did pictures all the time. We took pictures of all kinds....
Muñoz: So how early did you start taking pictures of the powwow?
Mayorga: When we were first married.
Muñoz: What year was that?
Mayorga: In ’48 [1948]. I mean, they’d come with their beautiful costumes. They’d dance in the streets and everything. And they used to close the stores at noon, because Mother was working at Carter’s. And we’d hurry, go see the parade, and then we’d rush up to the Museum of Northern Arizona to get piki bread, because they were making it hot on the rocks. We’d get the piki bread, and then we’d go home and change, and go for a hike down to Walnut Canyon or whatever. That was our Fourth of July. Then we’d come home and eat.
Muñoz: How about Cinco de Mayo?
Mayorga: Cinco de Mayo, I don’t remember much about it. Maybe by the time....
Muñoz: That was a Corona day anyway.
Mayorga: I remember the Sixteenth of September they used to close the stores.
Muñoz: Yeah, I’ve was going to ask about September sixteenth. They closed the stores on San Francisco?
Mayorga: Or am I thinking of Good Friday? Good Friday we used to close from twelve to three. I was working at Babbitts. The Sixteenth of September, they used to have a big deal going on the street, and the speeches going on.
Muñoz: And the grito? Do you remember the grito?
Mayorga: Oh, yes, Don Lozano, and who was the other man?
They’d say a grito. Yeah, I remember that now. That’s been out of my mind for years.
Muñoz: I asked Tita one time, because I didn’t know [unclear], because she’s an Española. The Miers lived right there at the corner, and they had that celebration right above their store, further up on the street. And that grito was for the independence from Spain. I often wondered what did the Españolas think at that time. She goes, "We screamed too!" (laughs)
Mayorga: Well everybody was united then. You know, town was small enough that you knew everybody. You couldn’t do a darned thing before your parents knew it! Darn it! You couldn’t get away with anything. I know I couldn’t.
Muñoz: Yeah, they’d come and tell your mom, huh? She would know before you even got home.
Mayorga: Oh yeah, she knew it before I got there.
Muñoz: What other community events did they have on the south side, do you remember?
Mayorga: I just remember the Jamaicas that got moved to the armory, and then it got so commercial, with the queens. Well, we had a lot of stuff going at the church. I think the church was the uniting thing of the whole neighbors, because it was all related to the church. We did everything through the church, more or less. Dances, I remember Socorro going to the dances when I was younger. And then I surprised my mom. When they went to Mexico, my daddy took me to the dances there on San Francisco where the skating rink used to be. They had dances there, and he was a good dancer-my daddy was a good dancer. He used to like to dance. And so he took me, and I was fourteen years old. My mom and Socorro went to Mexico and I stayed home with him. The next dance, Mom and Socorro were going to the dance, I got dressed too, because, you know, whole families used to go to the dances then. I didn’t say anything, I got up there, and I slowly got away from Mom. The next thing they know, I was out there on the dance floor, dancing. And Mom would signal me to come, and no way was I [unclear]. They were shocked at me. And my dad would say, "Well why can’t she dance if she likes it? It’s okay." He always stuck up for me.
Muñoz: So he was not your husband then, he was just dating you?
Mayorga: My daddy is the one that took me to my first dances.
Muñoz: What kind of music did they play?
Mayorga: Oh! good rancheras.
Muñoz: Were they local bands?
Mayorga: Uh-huh, Feliz Crowder, and Rodriguez.
Muñoz: I’m trying to think of the name. Inkopaters or Syncopaters?
Mayorga: Syncopaters, or something like that, uh-huh. Oh! she played that piano!
Muñoz: I’ve seen some photographs of the Macias. Ben Aginiga. Armida’s brother that got hit by the train. I think he was the one still in that picture.
Mayorga: Well I remember the older ones, like that Rodriguez man. He used to work at Babbitts in the vegetable department, I think. And then Feliz Crowder. I don’t know if Tony Rodriguez, a brother or whatever, he would play too. I know Feliz played for one of our high school dances.
Muñoz: Oh she did?
Mayorga: Uh-huh, because I started a Mexican group up at the high school. We had a real good group goin’.
Muñoz: What was it called?
Mayorga: I don’t even remember. But I know Erlene and I got into it. She was supposed to be our sponsor, and she never showed up, and she never called a meeting, so I just go mad and called a meeting. She said I couldn’t do that, and I said, "Yes I can. If you don’t have time for us, we don’t need you!" And we had sales, because I was with the homemaker’s club too. We had sales at noon to make money. We did that with the Mexican [unclear]. We had an assembly, Tio Tachias was playing the guitar.
Muñoz: His dad was also a musician.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. So we had a good group when I was in high school. Then my brother started Acheros [phonetic] at the college. They had a good group there, when they had the snow sculptures.
Muñoz: What year was that, in the ‘60s?
Mayorga: He was in high school and college. It had to be the ‘60s, because I had my kids. We went to see all the sculptures. They were beautiful, and the Acheros got first or second prize. And they had dinners that we cooked-ground beef for them to make tacos. Oh my God, I had cooking in the pressure cooker constantly on one day. They made a big luncheon. Somebody had a restaurant downtown-I forgot who. It was a Mexican restaurant, so they let them have that restaurant free that Sunday afternoon, so they could make money. The town was united.
Muñoz: You mentioned to me about how you didn’t have money for stockings.
Mayorga: We didn’t.
Muñoz: And you went to dance and you got soaking wet.
Mayorga: We were walking. We didn’t have money. Just walking. We got a downpour, and I had gotten this suit from Bessie Nackard. She had given it to me, Mother had altered for me. And it was rayon, I guess. Anyway, we got caught in the rain. That suit started shrinking and shrinking! Emilio’s shirt was sopping wet, and we used to work at the Flagstaff Theater, so we got in free, sat on the back seats until we dried out a little bit. We still, when I got home my skirts were way up, from down here-sopping wet, you know. Mother had to put Emilio’s shirt in the dryer, and my suit was just ruined. That was it. But it was nice, and everybody laughed at it. We had a good time. We ate with Mom and Dad. But you didn’t have money to do things. You went for walks, bicycle riding was something we did a lot. Lucy Navarro and Rachel Espino, I have pictures of them with us with bikes. That’s what we used to do on Sundays, go bike riding.
Muñoz: Yes, that would be something to do on Sundays. You talked about prostitution, and you talked about the house, and that was right across the street which is on Leroux. That’s right across from the Methodist church?
Mayorga: No, it was past the river then.
Muñoz: Across behind your house, in the back of the river?
Mayorga: No. Well, the river ran this way by the Aginiga’s, and they put all the bridge and all that. And the prostitution house was right by the Villapando’s right where Fresquez is now.
Muñoz: Oh, Fresquez, okay, on that corner.
Mayorga: Because that’s where I used to go and watch 'em doin’ acrobatics. I didn’t know any better.
Muñoz: So you saw the ladies, right?
Mayorga: Beautiful little outfits that they had on. I was just charmed with their outfits.
Muñoz: I’m sure!
Mayorga: And doing tricks. I didn’t know what kind of tricks they were doing. I was young enough to be stupid.
Muñoz: That was good.
Mayorga: It was good to see.
Muñoz: Were the ladies Mexican ladies?
Mayorga: No, mostly white.
Muñoz: Did you see another house like that further up on San Francisco?
Mayorga: Not that I ever noticed. It wasn’t as visible.
Muñoz: Well that’s probably because it was close to home.
Mayorga: That’s when I could go to Lucito’s and stop.
Muñoz: Oh, now I know why Lucito was there!
Mayorga: Because I’d go to Lucito’s, and Mom would send me for cigarettes. Can you believe it?! Ten cents a carton. They’d sell 'em to me, and I’d go to Mier’s and get Wings. I remember she bought Wings, the kind of cigarettes she smoked-ten, eleven cents I remember. No problem. "Give me a pack of cigarettes."
Muñoz: They wouldn’t even ask you for an ID huh?
Mayorga: They knew it was for Mom. We got caught, Socorro and I, smoking in the bathroom. Dumb me, I was giving her the cigarettes, and the smoke was going under the door, and Mom caught us.
Muñoz: She opened the door and said, "What are you doing?" huh? Did you get reprimanded?
Mayorga: Yes we did. I wasn’t smoking, I was just handing them to Socorro. I got in a lot of trouble because of her! She was older, she could talk me into anything.
Muñoz: You were just an innocent bystander.
Mayorga: Oh yeah, I was so innocent.
Muñoz: Do you remember the Depression?
Mayorga: I just remember.... I think what struck me more was that Dad had to go shovel snow to be able to buy a tongue so that we could make empanaditas. And another thing that I remember is that the sawmill used to give out candies and gifts to the workers. But I don’t think it really affected me. I was young enough that I didn’t know what was going on.
Muñoz: Okay. And the sawmill was....
Mayorga: Up.
Muñoz: 66?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: So by the Chantes?
Mayorga: Up above. I have a picture, beautiful picture of it, that Emilio took, in color, of the old mill before they tore it all down.
Muñoz: Yeah, it was torn down in the ‘50s.
Mayorga: Because he worked there, he got blown clear through the door of one of them. That hurt. He was working on the engine, and he asked him, "Did this thing cool down enough?" And the boss said, "I told you to weld it." Emilio was [grinder?] and he said, "I told you to weld it." So Emilio lit it and it blew up and blew him out through the doors. He was never well from his leg, his knee. But we have a beautiful picture of it. I gave it to the Pioneers, but I kept one. It’s all in color, red. You know how the mill was before they tore it down. I used to take him lunch over there. He worked nights sometimes.
Muñoz: And then he went to Southwest from there?
Mayorga: From there they moved to Southwest, uh-huh.
Muñoz: Okay, let’s see. Talk about Prohibition days here. Let’s go back to the Osles.
Mayorga: Well, they had a still. Vandervier was the sheriff then. So he knew when they were coming-they feds would tell him-so he’d warn the Osles. So what they did, they’d take all their stock to Mom and Dad’s garage to hide it.
Muñoz: Oh my goodness! Never got caught?
Mayorga: They never found it. Years later, when Dolores and them bought it, they found a big kettle up in the attic. And he had put all the lines behind the moldings. That’s where they found it-all the lines that fed it in the moldings. But Vandervier used to tell 'em, so they’d take all the booze over to Mom and Dad’s garage until the all clear, then take it back. I remember helping carry the jars. And I didn’t know, you know. You’re told to do this, you do it. You don’t question. But that’s what I remember, that that was supposed to be secret. Well, they were getting a kickback, so they weren’t going to lose that money. It was fun to remember a lot of that stuff that went on. You were so innocent at that time that you didn’t question anything.
Muñoz: And then now that’s you’re here, as you got older then, you’d look back and see what it was all about, going, "Oh my goodness, I was part of that!" Yeah. Alright. So hospitals, let’s talk about hospitals.
Mayorga: Well, my first experience was when I had my ruptured appendix.
Muñoz: What hospital did you go to then?
Mayorga: The small Sechrist-Sechrist then had just built it, and Mrs. Sechrist. So it was small, it was the original building. I’ve already ridden in the hearse. They didn’t have anything else to take me in when I was so sick. And Mom and Dad didn’t have transportation, so he hearse took me to the hospital.
Muñoz: What year was that? You were how old about?
Mayorga: Ten, in 1938. I was in the hospital three months, off and on.
Muñoz: Where was that located, that hospital?
Mayorga: Just across the street, the original building. What is it now?
Muñoz: FMC?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: You’re talking up on Beaver Street?
Mayorga: It was on Beaver Street.
Muñoz: And it was that little rock building?
Mayorga: Yeah, that little rock building there.
Muñoz: Okay.
Mayorga: And that’s where I had Yolanda and Michael. Dr. Sechrist delivered Mike. Dr. Rice delivered Yolanda. And [another] doctor delivered Frank up at by the mill. You remember they had built a hospital there. They separated. The doctors had a dispute with Dr. Sechrist, and they started a hospital over there, and that’s where I had Frank.
Muñoz: Oh, you had him at the Mercy Hospital, huh? So I asked you, or you mentioned, that you were born at home.
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Who was the midwife?
Mayorga: Dona Cuca.
Muñoz: [unclear] Cuca, okay. What did we say Cuca’s last name was? We don’t know? We just know her as Cuca?
Mayorga: I just knew her as Dona Cuca. [unclear] Doña Cuca. Somebody’s sick, so go get Doña Cuca.
Muñoz: Dave Estrella, he had his grandma, and you probably knew her, Dona Blasa Rodriguez.
Mayorga: Oh yes.
Muñoz: She was also a midwife. It’s interesting, because Dave used to go and hold the hands of the señoras when they were....
Mayorga: Oh, my God. Well, I was so stupid when Mother was pregnant with Frank, I never knew she was pregnant. I never noticed anything. They just locked us up in the pantry one night, and the next morning my mom says, "Come see your brother." "Where in the Sam Hill did he come from?!" I never noticed. Socorro knew, and Mother was, I guess, heavy. I don’t know. I just wasn’t aware of anything.
Muñoz: She hid it well.
Mayorga: She did. And she was making clothes, but I never.... She was always sewing, so it didn’t interest me. I guess I was too self-imposed on myself.
Muñoz: So you already said your serious illness was appendicitis, right?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Any other ones?
Mayorga: Oh, I’ve surgeries galore!
Muñoz: At the time when you were young, did you go to doctors, or did you have curanderas?
Mayorga: My mom.
Muñoz: Your mom was a curandera?
Mayorga: Well, say people were empacho, which is something I don’t believe. I can’t understand what pinching your back is going to do.
Muñoz: They lift you. Some of them lift them from the back and pull the....
Mayorga: The Osles always had my mom goin’. Somebody was empacho. What the Sam Hill is empacho? Or that’s an ojo. Junior got that a lot, and I don’t know what it was.
Muñoz: The ojo, huh?
Mayorga: Uh-huh. Que es asi an el ojo. La Señora Antonia.... What was she? She lived on the corner, the gray house. Doña Antonia Aguilar. She would cure ojo. Because my mom would take Junior over there. I don’t know what ojo was. I never knew the difference in him. I couldn’t see any difference. I was never a firm believer in that stuff. My mother believed in if the kids had a fever, which I know now are sitz baths, but at that time, my kids ran a fever, I went to the doctor. And my mother would wrap 'em up in a towel here and sit 'em in steamy water. And I thought, "My God, it’s gonna kill my kids!" (laughter) But they’d get well. But if they had a fever, she went home and I took to the doctors, because I was always scared, if they had any temperature, I just didn’t know what was goin’ on. And I guess because I had gone through so much when I was younger, I wasn’t going to take any chances with my kids.
Muñoz: Right.
Mayorga: But now I know they were sitz baths, and then she put tomatoes on their feet, plasters.
Muñoz: For the garganta.
Mayorga: Poor kids used to scream. I burned their little chest with it.
Muñoz: And they’re like, "Mom, what are you doing?!"
Mayorga: Yeah. And Frank said, "I saw a mustard plaster at the drugstore the other day, and I just ran out!" But that’s what Mother said to do, put mustard plasters on. I don’t know. It would draw the cold out.
Muñoz: So this was a home remedy that she had for you, that she used as well?
Mayorga: Uh-huh. We didn’t go to the doctors.
Muñoz: No, when you were younger, no.
Mayorga: Just didn’t go to doctors.
Muñoz: But you’re saying that you took your kids to the doctor?
Mayorga: Oh I did. I was one generation later.
Muñoz: Okay, we’ve talked about the midwives and the curanderas and you’ve named Cuca and Aguilar.
Mayorga: Uh-huh, Antonia Aguilar.
Muñoz: How about la llorona, seeing that you lived real close to the river. What do you think?
Mayorga: I never gave it much thought. My mother would try to scare us, I guess, "That the llorona’s gonna get you, behave." But I never knew what the llorona was, so it didn’t bother me. I figured if I can’t see it, it can’t hurt me. But you heard all those sayings from years ago.
Muñoz: That’s so true. Tell me a little bit about the Monterey Club.
Mayorga: Well, Joe . . . Sanchez was the one that started it. It was just started, a small group, to have something for the teenagers to do. It sponsored dances. They had queens. What was her name? Beautiful Mary? God, she lived on the corner. She was queen one year.
Muñoz: Mary Navarro?
Mayorga: Yeah, Mary Navarro. I think she was queen. They had picnics. Whole families would get together then, like the Melendezes had a huge truck, and they donated. Families, the young ones and old ones, would climb in the back of the truck, and we’d go down to Oak Creek and picnic all day. Everybody took food and you mingled, and it was nice.
Muñoz: Yeah, sounds like it.
Mayorga: He coordinated a real good group. They had a drill team that Mrs. Killip taught.
Muñoz: A drill team?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Oh wow.
Mayorga: They had white uniforms with white caps. I have a picture of Socorro, her and the Delgados, sitting on some post with a flag on it. I have no idea where they took that picture. I had a black-and-white of it. But they had a drill team. I remember that Mrs. Killip was the instructor, and they marched at that dance. They’d have good dances, they’d bring the regular players, and it was all family oriented. Like I tell you, the whole family went: the mother with the little kids and everything went to the dances then. But it was nice, and they had a lot of stuff goin’ for the younger kids.
Muñoz: Sounds like it was. So that was just the people within that community, huh, that would be the ones going down to these picnics?
Mayorga: Well, the Mexican people congregated mostly from the tracks-down this way it was all Mexican, more or less.
Muñoz: And I was going to ask you, did you ever socialize with the people-okay, let’s say the Calaveras, Los Chantes, La Plaza Vieja?
Mayorga: I went to the Chantes a lot, and hated it.
Muñoz: Why?
Mayorga: Because I wasn’t treated nice by the people there, because I didn’t go to school with them.
Muñoz: Oh! Okay.
Mayorga: My mother had my tia, Liboria’s mother, grandmother or whatever she was-my aunt anyway. She used to scold me every time she saw me at work at Babbitts. I hadn’t done anything yet, but she scolded me. She was great. She was really a great grandma. Then Lupe Espinos there. And Lencha. Oh my God, my mom and dad had friends galore up there.
Muñoz: In the Chantes huh?
Mayorga: And we’d go there on Sundays. Well Socorro, she knew all the Alonzos and everybody, you know. I didn’t know anybody.
Muñoz: How many years difference between you and Socorro?
Mayorga: Four. And then she was going to training school and they sent her to South Beaver. And then they kept me there, so I didn’t mingle with the other kids. I had a guy that was so mean he’d throw rocks at me when he passed by the training school and I was out on the playground.
Muñoz: Well he liked you!
Mayorga: What was his last name? They were fighters. I never knew, just in catechism, you know. That’s the only way I knew the kids, was in catechism.
Muñoz: And catechism was where?
Mayorga: At Our Lady of Guadalupe, Father Albouy used to come and teach us. I loved him. He was good. He was strict, very strict. But I don’t know. I was very partial to him. I really liked him a lot, and he was very nice to me.
Muñoz: That would be understandable.
Mayorga: And then about that time Mother would send me to go get baptismal records of this and that because the sisters wanted to come back to the United States, so I was always running errands for Mother, doing things like that, so I’d go talk to Father Albouy. And then he taught catechism, so [unclear].
Muñoz: I don’t know about Nativity, but I’ve never-I mean I’ve asked about any records at Our Lady of Guadalupe, and they don’t seem to find records at Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Mayorga: They don’t?! Father Albouy had everything that I ever asked for, and they were ancient records.
Muñoz: There’s been so many changes of priests at Our Lady of Guadalupe [unclear], so many.
Mayorga: Father Gomez came and made empanadas with us. He just had a ball, because it’s a tradition in New Mexico. So he had a ball! He ground meat and everything. He spent the whole Sunday with us. He was very nice. He’d come over to the house and have coffee. And we’d have Father Lindenmeyer all the time, because he liked Socorro and Teeny a lot. He and I could not get along.
Muñoz: You and Father Lindenmeyer? Really?
Mayorga: Well, I had my opinions, and he was very angry at me that I didn’t send my kids to Guadalupe School. I said, "You don’t have a thing to offer them. You set the Mexicans twenty years behind, segregating them. You made the Guadalupe Church and the school." They were being admitted to St. Anthony’s then, because they didn’t allow Mexicans at St. Anthony School for a long time. And they were just getting to where they did, and he builds a school and separates 'em. And then he wanted me to take my kids out of training school. I said, "My kids aren’t going to your school. You haven’t got a thing to offer them." I offered to start a Girl Scout troop. "Girl Scout troop?! That’s ridiculous!" I said, "Fine. I have my Girl Scouts at the training school anyway." He wasn’t interested in developing things that I was interested in having for the kids. And yet, the bus picked up Yoli. She wasn’t ready for school, and he had catechism classes in the summer or something, and he’d have the bus come right for her in front of the house if she’d go. So I let her go, doesn’t hurt her, she’ll learn something. And she fell one time, running, cut her eye. He was just chicken, couldn’t stand to see blood or anything. And so they called me and I said, "Okay, cut her eye? Take her and have stitches." And he was just shaking, he said, "I’ll take her." I said, "Nope, you stay home, I’ll take her. You can’t drive the way you are." (laughter) He liked my mom and Socorro a lot, but him and I, well, we just disagreed about a lot of things. And I got very upset one day because he told me that he would just love to see me when I’m mad. I said, "You don’t know how many times you’ve stepped through that door, Emilio and I aren’t even speaking to each other. But that was none of your business, or anybody else’s but his and mine. And while you were here, you never noticed. Maybe as soon as you walked out, we didn’t speak to each other. But that was between him and me, not you." See, I was very brutal. I’m very blunt. Mother used to get mad, "Don’t be like that." I said, "Mother, I’m going to say what I have to say. I can’t pretend." And so he tolerated me and I tolerated him. Socorro said, "Invite him, he doesn’t have family." "Okay, c’mon over, come for Christmas, Thanksgiving." Have him sprawled on the couch in the living room. He was nice, but we were just different personalities completely.
Muñoz: Yeah, it’s interesting, you say how you liked Father Albouy, where I’ve heard others didn’t care for Father Albouy.
Mayorga: Oh, I know.
Muñoz: And you didn’t like Father Lindenmeyer, and others just loved Father Lindenmeyer.
Mayorga: My mother just worshipped him. And him and I just couldn’t.... And Emilio did a lot of things for him.
Muñoz: And like you mentioned discrimination, it was among the mexicanos themselves. They separated themselves. And I hear that, especially the Chanteros was a whole different type of people.
Mayorga: Oh, you know, we were terrible, because the guys from the Chantes, Rudy Garcia and some of those would dress up on Sundays with suits, and go stand on San Francisco Street. We’d deliberately get dressed up and walk by 'em, and just mock them. Our boys didn’t dress up in suits, they were casual. But here they were, all dolled up, trying to impress the girls. And we would just pass by them, three or four of us that did this, and just kind of snicker.
Muñoz: You were bad!
Mayorga: We were! We didn’t mingle with them, we didn’t know them.
Muñoz: So why’d you do it?
Mayorga: Just to be mean. Young girls don’t have anything better to do.
Muñoz: What age were you?
Mayorga: About twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
Muñoz: So they’d go stand on the street at that early age on San Francisco?
Mayorga: They did, up by town, mostly town, by-well, you didn’t know what Black’s Bar was. What’s in there? Fronske Studio and all that used to be right there. And the girls would walk town, but we weren’t lookin’ for them. They stood out like sore thumbs with the black suits and the white shirts.
Muñoz: The mafia just came in.
Mayorga: But there was a distinction between them and us. Different people, I guess.
Muñoz: And you would consider yourself Plaza Nueva.
Mayorga: I guess so. And I considered myself an outsider because I didn’t fit in the other place, because I didn’t go to the same school. That made a lot of difference.
Muñoz: My mother went to training school too. I have to think back in my mind how snotty she was. (laughs)
Mayorga: And then I used to ride my bike, because we started later, and they’d be in school, and I’d ride my bike. Well, I had about a week extra vacation. So we all kind of just agitated each other.
Muñoz: That question about that goat that chased you home-where were you at, at the time? Are we talking San Francisco Street?
Mayorga: Yeah. Well, you know where the apartments were at Martinez.
Muñoz: The Tourist Home? Okay.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. Well, I’d be coming from the store, and that darned goat would see me and chase me all the way home, just butting me. Oh God, I was scared to death of that thing.
Muñoz: Now, who had the Tourist Home before the Martinezes did?
Mayorga: The españoles, Olga Dominguez. She was a beautiful girl.
Muñoz: Garcia, was that her maiden name?
Mayorga: Dominguez? She hung around with Fannie, and was it with....
Muñoz: Parmida [phonetic]?
Mayorga: No, not Parmida. Parmida wasn’t in that group. It was Fannie and one of the, Nino’s sister.
Muñoz: Nellie?
Mayorga: No, the younger one. Margaret? God, I grew up with them there in our neighborhood. Anyway, they were three girls, Olga and them, and they were really pretty girls, and they went to high school together-and Edith June.
Muñoz: June, yeah.
Mayorga: Edith, remember her?
Muñoz: Uh-huh, the ones around the corner.
Mayorga: They had the laundry originally. And the Nackards. You remember Nila Nackard and them, when they ran the apartments?
Muñoz: Oh yeah. Do you remember them going door-to-door as salesmen?
Mayorga: Oh, selling stuff? Yeah.
Muñoz: Covejeros, that’s what my mom used to call them, covejeros. Maybe they were gitanos, I don’t know.
Mayorga: I don’t know what they were, but they did. They had beautiful little black furniture, stuff like that. I have Emilio’s rocking chair. I have it out in the garage. I had it here, and it had some nails sticking out, and Madeline cut her fingers. And it’s all woven. It’s the woven kind. Maria bought two of them.
Muñoz: From the Nackards?
Mayorga: I don’t know who she bought 'em from, but one was Cecelia’s and one was Emilio's. And I’ve had it for years. I’ve offered it to the kids, and they don’t want it! They’re not sentimental about any of that stuff.
Muñoz: Isn’t that sad, though?! I would think so. I mean, gee, me, myself, I keep everything my parents.... I have my dad’s Navy outfit!
Mayorga: I just cleaned Emilio’s uniform this last year, his ranger uniform. The kids didn’t want it. I thought, "When I die, they’re not going to know what to do with it."
Muñoz: I must have rang at the wrong time, because that’s what I put out at the Day of the Dead-especially for the military people.
Mayorga: I called Billy Weldon, and he said yes, he would take it, because he puts the display at the library every so often. So he took it. Emilio was cremated, so he wasn’t buried in the uniform or anything. And I’ve had it ever since he got discharged. It’s gonna rot. I’ve had it in my cedar chest, and it was beautiful-the cap, everything. So I asked the boys, nobody wanted it. So I thought what do I do? I was cleaning out. I’m trying to leave as little mess for the kids as I can. I called Billy Weldon and he came and he said, "Oh, I’ll be so happy to have it, Lucy." So he took it. Because I figured they have parades, maybe somebody doesn’t have a uniform to wear or something like that. Somebody can use it on the line.
Muñoz: That’s blowing me away. Vince’s dad, Paul [Lopez], he really fits into his uniform. I’m like, "My God, he fits right in there," because we have that veterans’ parade, and then we give the military, the veterans, a picnic. So he was in his uniform, and he fits right in it.
Mayorga: Neat!
Muñoz: It is, it is. I have my dad’s navy outfit, the blues. I wore out his whites. When I was a kid growing up, I used to wear his whites.
Mayorga: I have the kind of [soft?] gray [unclear]. We wore out the blankets, because those blankets were really neat. We used to have the military blankets.
Muñoz: Nice and warm, huh?
Mayorga: The kids didn’t want anything. They’re not savers. And I used to save everything. I had a beautiful saint that I’m sorry I gave some to Nino de Atocha. The body, it was my great-grandma’s. And I had it in Cottonwood. Emilio had made me a real nice shelf for it and everything. I had it here in Flagstaff for years. My mom gave it to me. And then I came here and I thought, "I don’t want to make holes in this house. There’s nothing behind these walls. There’s no lumber behind these darned walls." So I had it on the floor for ages, and then I asked Margaret, my sister-in-law. She said, "Oh, my sister in Mexico would love it!" I said, "Well, take it." But it was the body, and it had the [esceplar?] here, and the whole.... Just beautiful. And Mother had woven some palms. I don’t know how she wove them, real pretty, in there. And I had that thirty years or so.
Muñoz: But I understand what you’re saying. Well, that concludes my oral history.
Mayorga: Well thank you.
Muñoz: [unclear] for the conversation and other stuff here.
Mayorga: I really enjoyed reminiscing.
Muñoz: It is fun, isn’t it?
Mayorga: I don’t have anybody here to reminisce. The kids don’t remember anything. And they wonder why I want to remember that stuff.
Muñoz: I think it’s just so important, I really do.
Mayorga: Well, it’s history!
Muñoz: Not only that, it’s a legacy you’re going to leave for your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren. I mean, finally they’ll be able to say, "Oh, that was my Grandma Mayorga!" And you might be great-great-great-great, how many greats-grandmas times have you been, yeah. And your kids don’t have anything to pass down.
Mayorga: Well like me, see, I hardly remember my mother’s side of the family, because they went to Mexico. I knew my grandpa for a week. He came from California, and I wasn’t working or anything, so I took him all around, and I took him to Leboria, because he was her uncle. So there, and I just took him different places that he wanted to see. So I got to know my grandpa. My grandma, I knew her for one day in California. My aunts I’ve seen twice. When I went to California, we were on vacation, Emilio, the kids, and I. And then when my grandma died, we went for the funeral, my mom and I. I didn’t want Mother to go alone, so I went with her. And I met my uncles and my aunts. I don’t remember them when they went to Mexico. I was little. And I have no history with them. You know, let’s put it this way, it doesn’t bother me whether I see them or not, because I don’t know anything about them, it’s not a family. And here, with my dad’s side, my Tia Concha, oh my God, we were in each other’s house all the time. And yet I have my Tia Manuela. I don’t know if you remember her.
Muñoz: Manuela....
Mayorga: Lucero. She was my dad’s sister. They were just the three of them that survived. My aunt and my uncle had a restaurant on San Francisco Street, right by where the laundry used to be, right next.... Remember where Pablito Martinez had his store?
Muñoz: Yes.
Mayorga: Okay, that used to be a restaurant that my aunt used to run there before. And so we never mingled too much. They were too busy, or they just weren’t close. And then they moved to California during the war. And they’d come and they’d stay with my mother. But by then I was in high school and I wasn’t close to 'em, I wasn’t interested in a, you know, relationship then. And I’m sorry now, because I’m sure that they would have known a lot of history for my daddy.
Muñoz: Sure.
Mayorga: My dad remembered a lot. He had a good memory. And he had a lot of tall tales to tell. I used to laugh, because I have a picture of him, just a beautiful picture of him in his uniform. And I had it on top on my mantle in the fireplace. I had him when he had the shingles so bad, poor thing. I’d take him home with me, and he’d sit there and he’d look at the picture and he’d grin. "Oh, honey, I could tell you tales!," he’d tell me. I’d say, "Tell me, Daddy, tell me." "Oh no, honey. No mija." (laughter) Emelio says, "Your dad told me so many things, honey, he wouldn’t tell [you]." I said, "Well, tell me!" "Uh-uh, I promised him I wouldn’t tell." So he never would tell me what my daddy told him. But he could tell jokes. I mean, one joke after another! And Mother would have fits with him, "Behave, Frank! Behave, Frank!" But he was full of joy. Mother was always the more serious one. And I don’t know who I took after, but I could work like Daddy around any [unclear]. He had a real happy side. And Mother was always very serious. I guess life was harder for her, I don’t know.
Muñoz: No telling. But you say your dad was from Concho, Arizona, huh?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: But was born in New Mexico?
Mayorga: I don’t really remember, to tell you the truth. But they came from there. They were, like he said, the second Mexican family here in Flagstaff, and they had to stay over on that side because it was flooded. They had to stay there three days before the flood receded, and then they came up. And I don’t know whether they settled on San Francisco Street.... No, they bought the lot from-him and Mother were gonna get married. Fifty dollars, can you believe it?
Muñoz: On San Francisco, that lot right there.
Mayorga: Where they lived.
Muñoz: So when he first came, where was his first house?
Mayorga: I don’t know.
Muñoz: Socorro would have, huh?
Mayorga: No, Mother married Dad when Socorro was three. I know one year-they teased me-one year they lived at Tuba City, my mom and my dad, in a tent! He was working for the electric lights. They lived in a tent over there, because they had a lot of Indian friends. Oh God, they’d bring fruit in the summertime, and I knew what that meant! Canning and canning, preserves!
Muñoz: [unclear]
Mayorga: And you know, nothing but hot stoves, and they didn’t have the Sure-Jell or anything. You stirred fruit all day long! But it was so good. Mom made all the preserves and pears and syrup and everything. But they lived in Tuba City for a year, and then they used to tease me because they said I was born over there. I said, "I wasn’t born over there!" But they’d tell me, "Yeah, you’re part Indian, Lucy." (laughter) So they’d tease me I was born in Tuba. I know I wasn’t. My birth certificate is here. But they teased me all the time. Daddy was telling me, oh my God, Delia, I could tell you stories [unclear]. Oh Lord! But he had a real good sense of humor. He really did. Mother was the more serious one. I had a boyfriend who gave me a pen and pencil set for Christmas one time, and I wasn’t supposed to have a boyfriend. So I told Daddy, "I got somethin’, Daddy, but I can’t take it...." I didn’t have any place to hide anything inside the house. Socorro and I shared a chest of drawers. He said, "What is it, honey?" I said, "Well, I got this nice pen and pencil set from a boyfriend." "I’ll hide it for you, honey." So he hid it in the garage.
Muñoz: So who was more strict-your mom?
Mayorga: Oh God yes! You didn’t ask Mom twice. I could ask Dad once and hug and kiss him and, "Okay, mija, you can go." (laughter) "Jenny, let her go. What’s wrong?"
Muñoz: Let me mention, your brother was the Flagstaff city manager.
McGlothlin: Frank, yes, I remember that. I guess we’re out of time on this tape. Just went to the very end of both tapes. That’s good.

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Lucy Mayorga- Part 2
Interviewed by Delia Munoz
Camera by Susan McGlothlin
April 10, 2012
Muñoz: Emilio.
Mayorga: Okay, we were having a class together, and I had to dissect a frog, and there was no way I was going to dissect a frog, so he did the dissecting for me. We sat next to each other, and we became friends then. He was one of the line, because I dated a lot, different boys, had fun. I wasn’t attached to anybody. And then I think it was like that with him for about a year or so, and then we started going out more steady, and became more and more. And then he went to the service. I was a senior, and he missed his senior year.
Muñoz: He missed his senior year?
Mayorga: Uh-huh. So then when he came back, he gave me an engagement ring for my birthday.
Muñoz: Oh my goodness!
Mayorga: And my birthday is the fifteenth of February, and Emilio’s is the fourteenth. And we went down to the courthouse-crazy kids in high school-we knew Mrs. Schmidt [phonetic] in the Records Department, and she looked it up for us. He’s here, and you turn the page, and I’m registered right next to him. So when I’d get mad, he’d say, "Don’t be so stubborn, we’re meant for each other, we’re meant to be together." I’d say, "No we’re not! No we’re not! I’m not ready!" But we dated for about two and a half, three years, then he went to the service, came back, and he asked me, "Are you ready?" I said, "I think so." And so he gave me an engagement ring for my birthday. And then I told him, "Well, we don’t have money or anything. We have to wait until September or October before we can have money." I was working at Sears then. I was giving all my money to Mom. That’s the way we grew up. You earned the money, you gave it for the household. And so I made a deal with Mom, I said, "You can have every other paycheck. How’s that?" She said, "Okay." I said, "I have to start getting things." I thought we were going to get married around October, and he said, "I don’t want to wait anymore. Let’s get married!" "You’re crazy!" So we got married in April. (laughter) So we had to rush and fix the house in the back. But we had a small wedding.
Muñoz: I was just going to ask, compared to what your wedding was like, describing your wedding, it was small.
Mayorga: Well, compared to what they have now, my God! I wasn’t even going to have that big a wedding. We were just going to get married, and Mom was going to make Mexican chocolate and Mexican bread and we were going to have that at home. And then his mother insisted that we had to have a bigger wedding. Oh God, we didn’t have money. I wasn’t going to spend money feeding other people when we needed....
~00:03:02
Muñoz: You sound like my husband!
Mayorga: Well, I mean, we didn’t have the money, so why go feed a multitude of people that you’d see once a year? I guess I’m horrible, but that’s the way I was. And so we had a bigger wedding, but it was just my sister and my brother-in-law were the important ones, and then I had his sister and Margie Martinez, Teeny’s sister. You remember Teeny, Socorro’s husband?
Muñoz: Yeah.
Mayorga: Well, his sister. That’s all that was in our wedding. Oh, and Vera and Richard. We just had a small dinner at the church, and that was it. We went to Grand Canyon for our honeymoon.
Muñoz: Where did you stay?
Mayorga: I don’t even remember the motel anymore. But we had to come back, Emilio had to go to work. So it was nice, because the people that went, you knew them. You had something really in common, they weren’t just names out of a phone book, you know. I never liked big doings. Socorro had a small wedding too-my sister. My brother had a nice one in New Mexico. He got married in New Mexico.
Muñoz: Is his wife from New Mexico?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: So baptismals, was that something small, like the wedding, as well?
Mayorga: Well, I was terrible. When I had my daughter, Ruth and Charlie Goitia were very good friends, and they had already had a child, and we baptized her. And I don’t know where he thought he was going to baptize ours, but I wanted my mom and my dad, so they took her to be baptized during the week. (chuckles) Father baptized her during the week, and we didn’t have anything, it was just us. I just wanted her baptized. But my dad was of the old style, he came in with a speech. I had no idea what he was saying to me. (in Spanish) "La embra que estos santos tener recibido." Oh my God, what do I say, Dad? Thank you. Daddy was very political, with all that tradition that they did. I had no idea what he was telling me in Spanish, but I said thank you. But we didn’t have anything when we baptized Yoli.
Muñoz: Because it’s very different nowadays, huh?
Mayorga: I mean, the baby doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s just for the parents. I guess it’s good, I don’t know. I’ve never been one for big doings like that. I like close family.
Muñoz: That’s more of the traditional part, when it’s all about family.
Mayorga: Well that’s what I think. But to go and invite a hundred people....
Muñoz: And feed 'em.
Mayorga: Feed 'em and then clean up? Oh God!
Muñoz: Too much work.
Mayorga: Too much work.
Muñoz: As you were growing up, when someone passed away, the wakes, do you remember them being at home, or at the church?
Mayorga: Oh God, I remember one. The people lived at, what was it, section or whatever they carried.
Muñoz: Oh, yeah, the section housing over here off of Milton.
Mayorga: Up by the underpass and all that. Okay, well, my mom and my dad had a very good friend there, and he passed away. And my God, that wake or whatever it was, was all night long! I remember they had a fire outside. All the men were drinking out there.
Muñoz: Celebrating, huh?
Mayorga: Yeah. And I couldn’t believe it, because I know my mom stayed with her for ages. After school I had to go from training school up to that section house, because my mom was staying with the lady during the nights and stuff like that. I guess they were very close friends, because the lady came and stayed with us for months and months.
Muñoz: What did her husband die of? [unclear]
Mayorga: But I remember the Fajardos up there. That’s where I got to know them.
Muñoz: And you know, Raymundo Ceballos lived in that section housing up there as well.
Mayorga: Well I knew the Fajardos and everyone else I knew from up there, because the man was sick for quite a while, so Mother stayed up there and helped take care of him. But I remember the wakes were forever, and when my uncle died, my Uncle Elias-that horse killed him-they had the wake at the mortuary. But they were there forever, all night long too. They put us to sleep in a little room, because we were young, we weren’t gonna stay up. I must have been about ten when my uncle died. But I don’t go for that stuff.
Muñoz: For the rosary and stuff?
Mayorga: Well, I think if you just say a mass for them.... I don’t like eulogies. I just don’t like 'em. I was very upset....
Muñoz: You were telling me that you had requested....
Mayorga: I had requested we didn’t have any, because Emilio and I had talked about it, and both of us said no. And we had it!
Muñoz: Whether you wanted it or not.
Mayorga: Yep.
Muñoz: Processions and funerals at that time, like during that man’s time-that would be 1938, if you were ten years old-at that time how did they carry or have the funeral service? Did they have cars by then?
Mayorga: You mean like carry them to the cemetery?
Muñoz: Right, carry them to the cemetery.
Mayorga: I don’t remember ever going to the cemetery.
Muñoz: Do you remember where the cemetery was when you were a young person?
Mayorga: I don’t think it was where it’s at now, because I think it was over there by my aunt, Tia Concha’s house, further out. I think that’s where the cemetery was.
Muñoz: Well, there was a cemetery there alright.
Mayorga: Up on the hill.
Muñoz: Uh-huh, on O’Leary Street.
Mayorga: Yeah. I remember the cemetery, but I remember that they used to call it....
Muñoz: Calaveras.
Mayorga: Calaveras, yeah. Because I used to ask permission if I could go and play over there. We baptized a doll, believe it or not! We had a ceremony.
Muñoz: How many people did you invite to that?
Mayorga: Just the Martinezes, the ones that have the restaurant-Ramona Martinez and her brother. They were my padrinos. We had the ceremony, the whole bit.
Muñoz: And you were just a kid, huh?
Mayorga: Yeah, we were just little kids. We’d make houses on the dirt with a stick. The little flowers were the eggs. We didn’t have dishes, we didn’t have anything, but we had a lot of good times just pretending.
Muñoz: Yeah, good imaginations.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. So Mike was always my compadre. (laughter) He was my compadre. Ramona was my comadre. When we’d see each other in high school, you know. And that was from childhood, because they lived across from us then. And then they moved up to O’Leary. And we used to go up and ask for permission up there.
Muñoz: Okay. So they lived....
Mayorga: The Martinezes lived further down, by where my in-laws lived. Is that O’Leary?
Mayorga: Yeah, O’Leary, you go down to O’Leary, and your in-laws would live in Benton. But you’re going up the street to Calaveras on O’Leary Street. And then down in that area was the cemetery.
Mayorga: Uh-huh, I remember that. But I hardly had any occasion to go. I guess nobody that I knew was dying. Or if they died, I didn’t go.
Muñoz: How about a mortuary, do you remember a mortuary?
Mayorga: When my uncle died, they left us alone at the mortuary, and they went across to the Chinese restaurant to have breakfast. I guess we were all sleeping. I just remember being scared to death being there with a casket.
Muñoz: Yeah, really. Downtown?
Mayorga: It was downtown on ... Aspen?
Muñoz: Uh-huh, San Francisco and Aspen by the Monte V., huh?
Mayorga: Yeah, further down.
Muñoz: Monte Vista.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. That’s the only mortuary that I remember, because I never went to funerals.
Muñoz: Kind of kept away from that, huh?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Okay, you mentioned the Jamaica with your mom. She was kind of the coordinator of the Jamaica?
Mayorga: She started it. She wrote to my grandmother, and my grandmother gave her ideas what they did in Mexico. So the first Jamaica they were gonna have, they were gonna have on San Francisco Street. So my dad was working for the light company, so they gave him permission, they gave him all the equipment, for him and his coworker to put lights all on San Francisco, from the tracks down to by where the Villapandos lived-I think that far down. But then the weather started getting bad.
Muñoz: What month was this, do you remember?
Mayorga: I don’t remember. But I think we’d get the spring rains, or early rains, and it was undecided, so most of the people decided they should have it at the armory. But then there were a couple of stubborn people that puestos on San Francisco Street anyway. But they changed it to the armory. But they were gonna have it on the street, like they used to have it in Mexico, because everybody had the little stations in Mexico, and that’s the way it was gonna be on San Francisco Street. And then they were gonna have like a street dance.
Muñoz: And those stations, were they where they can get through?
Mayorga: Puestos, yeah. And everybody would have food and you could buy it. But there were two or three people that got a little stubborn, but the rest of them went to the armory.
Muñoz: Okay, because I remember the Jamaica at the armory, and I remember it at the basement. Actually, it was outside of the church in the Our Lady of Guadalupe, within the parking lot and partly over where that santo is.
Mayorga: Well maybe I was in Cottonwood by then.
Muñoz: Maybe. But that’s the way it was when I was a little girl. Okay, what do you remember about the Fourth of July?
Mayorga: The powwow. Oh, the parades! We have it on tape. Emilio took it on tape. And Danny, my nephew, hitched a ride on one of the wagons with the Indians, so we have him on tape there. Michael has all my tapes. He’s going to convert them to CDs. I know he hasn’t had time. Emilio was crazy about taking pictures of any [unclear], always. We used to do the photography at home. We had a darkroom at home. So we did pictures all the time. We took pictures of all kinds....
Muñoz: So how early did you start taking pictures of the powwow?
Mayorga: When we were first married.
Muñoz: What year was that?
Mayorga: In ’48 [1948]. I mean, they’d come with their beautiful costumes. They’d dance in the streets and everything. And they used to close the stores at noon, because Mother was working at Carter’s. And we’d hurry, go see the parade, and then we’d rush up to the Museum of Northern Arizona to get piki bread, because they were making it hot on the rocks. We’d get the piki bread, and then we’d go home and change, and go for a hike down to Walnut Canyon or whatever. That was our Fourth of July. Then we’d come home and eat.
Muñoz: How about Cinco de Mayo?
Mayorga: Cinco de Mayo, I don’t remember much about it. Maybe by the time....
Muñoz: That was a Corona day anyway.
Mayorga: I remember the Sixteenth of September they used to close the stores.
Muñoz: Yeah, I’ve was going to ask about September sixteenth. They closed the stores on San Francisco?
Mayorga: Or am I thinking of Good Friday? Good Friday we used to close from twelve to three. I was working at Babbitts. The Sixteenth of September, they used to have a big deal going on the street, and the speeches going on.
Muñoz: And the grito? Do you remember the grito?
Mayorga: Oh, yes, Don Lozano, and who was the other man?
They’d say a grito. Yeah, I remember that now. That’s been out of my mind for years.
Muñoz: I asked Tita one time, because I didn’t know [unclear], because she’s an Española. The Miers lived right there at the corner, and they had that celebration right above their store, further up on the street. And that grito was for the independence from Spain. I often wondered what did the Españolas think at that time. She goes, "We screamed too!" (laughs)
Mayorga: Well everybody was united then. You know, town was small enough that you knew everybody. You couldn’t do a darned thing before your parents knew it! Darn it! You couldn’t get away with anything. I know I couldn’t.
Muñoz: Yeah, they’d come and tell your mom, huh? She would know before you even got home.
Mayorga: Oh yeah, she knew it before I got there.
Muñoz: What other community events did they have on the south side, do you remember?
Mayorga: I just remember the Jamaicas that got moved to the armory, and then it got so commercial, with the queens. Well, we had a lot of stuff going at the church. I think the church was the uniting thing of the whole neighbors, because it was all related to the church. We did everything through the church, more or less. Dances, I remember Socorro going to the dances when I was younger. And then I surprised my mom. When they went to Mexico, my daddy took me to the dances there on San Francisco where the skating rink used to be. They had dances there, and he was a good dancer-my daddy was a good dancer. He used to like to dance. And so he took me, and I was fourteen years old. My mom and Socorro went to Mexico and I stayed home with him. The next dance, Mom and Socorro were going to the dance, I got dressed too, because, you know, whole families used to go to the dances then. I didn’t say anything, I got up there, and I slowly got away from Mom. The next thing they know, I was out there on the dance floor, dancing. And Mom would signal me to come, and no way was I [unclear]. They were shocked at me. And my dad would say, "Well why can’t she dance if she likes it? It’s okay." He always stuck up for me.
Muñoz: So he was not your husband then, he was just dating you?
Mayorga: My daddy is the one that took me to my first dances.
Muñoz: What kind of music did they play?
Mayorga: Oh! good rancheras.
Muñoz: Were they local bands?
Mayorga: Uh-huh, Feliz Crowder, and Rodriguez.
Muñoz: I’m trying to think of the name. Inkopaters or Syncopaters?
Mayorga: Syncopaters, or something like that, uh-huh. Oh! she played that piano!
Muñoz: I’ve seen some photographs of the Macias. Ben Aginiga. Armida’s brother that got hit by the train. I think he was the one still in that picture.
Mayorga: Well I remember the older ones, like that Rodriguez man. He used to work at Babbitts in the vegetable department, I think. And then Feliz Crowder. I don’t know if Tony Rodriguez, a brother or whatever, he would play too. I know Feliz played for one of our high school dances.
Muñoz: Oh she did?
Mayorga: Uh-huh, because I started a Mexican group up at the high school. We had a real good group goin’.
Muñoz: What was it called?
Mayorga: I don’t even remember. But I know Erlene and I got into it. She was supposed to be our sponsor, and she never showed up, and she never called a meeting, so I just go mad and called a meeting. She said I couldn’t do that, and I said, "Yes I can. If you don’t have time for us, we don’t need you!" And we had sales, because I was with the homemaker’s club too. We had sales at noon to make money. We did that with the Mexican [unclear]. We had an assembly, Tio Tachias was playing the guitar.
Muñoz: His dad was also a musician.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. So we had a good group when I was in high school. Then my brother started Acheros [phonetic] at the college. They had a good group there, when they had the snow sculptures.
Muñoz: What year was that, in the ‘60s?
Mayorga: He was in high school and college. It had to be the ‘60s, because I had my kids. We went to see all the sculptures. They were beautiful, and the Acheros got first or second prize. And they had dinners that we cooked-ground beef for them to make tacos. Oh my God, I had cooking in the pressure cooker constantly on one day. They made a big luncheon. Somebody had a restaurant downtown-I forgot who. It was a Mexican restaurant, so they let them have that restaurant free that Sunday afternoon, so they could make money. The town was united.
Muñoz: You mentioned to me about how you didn’t have money for stockings.
Mayorga: We didn’t.
Muñoz: And you went to dance and you got soaking wet.
Mayorga: We were walking. We didn’t have money. Just walking. We got a downpour, and I had gotten this suit from Bessie Nackard. She had given it to me, Mother had altered for me. And it was rayon, I guess. Anyway, we got caught in the rain. That suit started shrinking and shrinking! Emilio’s shirt was sopping wet, and we used to work at the Flagstaff Theater, so we got in free, sat on the back seats until we dried out a little bit. We still, when I got home my skirts were way up, from down here-sopping wet, you know. Mother had to put Emilio’s shirt in the dryer, and my suit was just ruined. That was it. But it was nice, and everybody laughed at it. We had a good time. We ate with Mom and Dad. But you didn’t have money to do things. You went for walks, bicycle riding was something we did a lot. Lucy Navarro and Rachel Espino, I have pictures of them with us with bikes. That’s what we used to do on Sundays, go bike riding.
Muñoz: Yes, that would be something to do on Sundays. You talked about prostitution, and you talked about the house, and that was right across the street which is on Leroux. That’s right across from the Methodist church?
Mayorga: No, it was past the river then.
Muñoz: Across behind your house, in the back of the river?
Mayorga: No. Well, the river ran this way by the Aginiga’s, and they put all the bridge and all that. And the prostitution house was right by the Villapando’s right where Fresquez is now.
Muñoz: Oh, Fresquez, okay, on that corner.
Mayorga: Because that’s where I used to go and watch 'em doin’ acrobatics. I didn’t know any better.
Muñoz: So you saw the ladies, right?
Mayorga: Beautiful little outfits that they had on. I was just charmed with their outfits.
Muñoz: I’m sure!
Mayorga: And doing tricks. I didn’t know what kind of tricks they were doing. I was young enough to be stupid.
Muñoz: That was good.
Mayorga: It was good to see.
Muñoz: Were the ladies Mexican ladies?
Mayorga: No, mostly white.
Muñoz: Did you see another house like that further up on San Francisco?
Mayorga: Not that I ever noticed. It wasn’t as visible.
Muñoz: Well that’s probably because it was close to home.
Mayorga: That’s when I could go to Lucito’s and stop.
Muñoz: Oh, now I know why Lucito was there!
Mayorga: Because I’d go to Lucito’s, and Mom would send me for cigarettes. Can you believe it?! Ten cents a carton. They’d sell 'em to me, and I’d go to Mier’s and get Wings. I remember she bought Wings, the kind of cigarettes she smoked-ten, eleven cents I remember. No problem. "Give me a pack of cigarettes."
Muñoz: They wouldn’t even ask you for an ID huh?
Mayorga: They knew it was for Mom. We got caught, Socorro and I, smoking in the bathroom. Dumb me, I was giving her the cigarettes, and the smoke was going under the door, and Mom caught us.
Muñoz: She opened the door and said, "What are you doing?" huh? Did you get reprimanded?
Mayorga: Yes we did. I wasn’t smoking, I was just handing them to Socorro. I got in a lot of trouble because of her! She was older, she could talk me into anything.
Muñoz: You were just an innocent bystander.
Mayorga: Oh yeah, I was so innocent.
Muñoz: Do you remember the Depression?
Mayorga: I just remember.... I think what struck me more was that Dad had to go shovel snow to be able to buy a tongue so that we could make empanaditas. And another thing that I remember is that the sawmill used to give out candies and gifts to the workers. But I don’t think it really affected me. I was young enough that I didn’t know what was going on.
Muñoz: Okay. And the sawmill was....
Mayorga: Up.
Muñoz: 66?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: So by the Chantes?
Mayorga: Up above. I have a picture, beautiful picture of it, that Emilio took, in color, of the old mill before they tore it all down.
Muñoz: Yeah, it was torn down in the ‘50s.
Mayorga: Because he worked there, he got blown clear through the door of one of them. That hurt. He was working on the engine, and he asked him, "Did this thing cool down enough?" And the boss said, "I told you to weld it." Emilio was [grinder?] and he said, "I told you to weld it." So Emilio lit it and it blew up and blew him out through the doors. He was never well from his leg, his knee. But we have a beautiful picture of it. I gave it to the Pioneers, but I kept one. It’s all in color, red. You know how the mill was before they tore it down. I used to take him lunch over there. He worked nights sometimes.
Muñoz: And then he went to Southwest from there?
Mayorga: From there they moved to Southwest, uh-huh.
Muñoz: Okay, let’s see. Talk about Prohibition days here. Let’s go back to the Osles.
Mayorga: Well, they had a still. Vandervier was the sheriff then. So he knew when they were coming-they feds would tell him-so he’d warn the Osles. So what they did, they’d take all their stock to Mom and Dad’s garage to hide it.
Muñoz: Oh my goodness! Never got caught?
Mayorga: They never found it. Years later, when Dolores and them bought it, they found a big kettle up in the attic. And he had put all the lines behind the moldings. That’s where they found it-all the lines that fed it in the moldings. But Vandervier used to tell 'em, so they’d take all the booze over to Mom and Dad’s garage until the all clear, then take it back. I remember helping carry the jars. And I didn’t know, you know. You’re told to do this, you do it. You don’t question. But that’s what I remember, that that was supposed to be secret. Well, they were getting a kickback, so they weren’t going to lose that money. It was fun to remember a lot of that stuff that went on. You were so innocent at that time that you didn’t question anything.
Muñoz: And then now that’s you’re here, as you got older then, you’d look back and see what it was all about, going, "Oh my goodness, I was part of that!" Yeah. Alright. So hospitals, let’s talk about hospitals.
Mayorga: Well, my first experience was when I had my ruptured appendix.
Muñoz: What hospital did you go to then?
Mayorga: The small Sechrist-Sechrist then had just built it, and Mrs. Sechrist. So it was small, it was the original building. I’ve already ridden in the hearse. They didn’t have anything else to take me in when I was so sick. And Mom and Dad didn’t have transportation, so he hearse took me to the hospital.
Muñoz: What year was that? You were how old about?
Mayorga: Ten, in 1938. I was in the hospital three months, off and on.
Muñoz: Where was that located, that hospital?
Mayorga: Just across the street, the original building. What is it now?
Muñoz: FMC?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: You’re talking up on Beaver Street?
Mayorga: It was on Beaver Street.
Muñoz: And it was that little rock building?
Mayorga: Yeah, that little rock building there.
Muñoz: Okay.
Mayorga: And that’s where I had Yolanda and Michael. Dr. Sechrist delivered Mike. Dr. Rice delivered Yolanda. And [another] doctor delivered Frank up at by the mill. You remember they had built a hospital there. They separated. The doctors had a dispute with Dr. Sechrist, and they started a hospital over there, and that’s where I had Frank.
Muñoz: Oh, you had him at the Mercy Hospital, huh? So I asked you, or you mentioned, that you were born at home.
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Who was the midwife?
Mayorga: Dona Cuca.
Muñoz: [unclear] Cuca, okay. What did we say Cuca’s last name was? We don’t know? We just know her as Cuca?
Mayorga: I just knew her as Dona Cuca. [unclear] Doña Cuca. Somebody’s sick, so go get Doña Cuca.
Muñoz: Dave Estrella, he had his grandma, and you probably knew her, Dona Blasa Rodriguez.
Mayorga: Oh yes.
Muñoz: She was also a midwife. It’s interesting, because Dave used to go and hold the hands of the señoras when they were....
Mayorga: Oh, my God. Well, I was so stupid when Mother was pregnant with Frank, I never knew she was pregnant. I never noticed anything. They just locked us up in the pantry one night, and the next morning my mom says, "Come see your brother." "Where in the Sam Hill did he come from?!" I never noticed. Socorro knew, and Mother was, I guess, heavy. I don’t know. I just wasn’t aware of anything.
Muñoz: She hid it well.
Mayorga: She did. And she was making clothes, but I never.... She was always sewing, so it didn’t interest me. I guess I was too self-imposed on myself.
Muñoz: So you already said your serious illness was appendicitis, right?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Any other ones?
Mayorga: Oh, I’ve surgeries galore!
Muñoz: At the time when you were young, did you go to doctors, or did you have curanderas?
Mayorga: My mom.
Muñoz: Your mom was a curandera?
Mayorga: Well, say people were empacho, which is something I don’t believe. I can’t understand what pinching your back is going to do.
Muñoz: They lift you. Some of them lift them from the back and pull the....
Mayorga: The Osles always had my mom goin’. Somebody was empacho. What the Sam Hill is empacho? Or that’s an ojo. Junior got that a lot, and I don’t know what it was.
Muñoz: The ojo, huh?
Mayorga: Uh-huh. Que es asi an el ojo. La Señora Antonia.... What was she? She lived on the corner, the gray house. Doña Antonia Aguilar. She would cure ojo. Because my mom would take Junior over there. I don’t know what ojo was. I never knew the difference in him. I couldn’t see any difference. I was never a firm believer in that stuff. My mother believed in if the kids had a fever, which I know now are sitz baths, but at that time, my kids ran a fever, I went to the doctor. And my mother would wrap 'em up in a towel here and sit 'em in steamy water. And I thought, "My God, it’s gonna kill my kids!" (laughter) But they’d get well. But if they had a fever, she went home and I took to the doctors, because I was always scared, if they had any temperature, I just didn’t know what was goin’ on. And I guess because I had gone through so much when I was younger, I wasn’t going to take any chances with my kids.
Muñoz: Right.
Mayorga: But now I know they were sitz baths, and then she put tomatoes on their feet, plasters.
Muñoz: For the garganta.
Mayorga: Poor kids used to scream. I burned their little chest with it.
Muñoz: And they’re like, "Mom, what are you doing?!"
Mayorga: Yeah. And Frank said, "I saw a mustard plaster at the drugstore the other day, and I just ran out!" But that’s what Mother said to do, put mustard plasters on. I don’t know. It would draw the cold out.
Muñoz: So this was a home remedy that she had for you, that she used as well?
Mayorga: Uh-huh. We didn’t go to the doctors.
Muñoz: No, when you were younger, no.
Mayorga: Just didn’t go to doctors.
Muñoz: But you’re saying that you took your kids to the doctor?
Mayorga: Oh I did. I was one generation later.
Muñoz: Okay, we’ve talked about the midwives and the curanderas and you’ve named Cuca and Aguilar.
Mayorga: Uh-huh, Antonia Aguilar.
Muñoz: How about la llorona, seeing that you lived real close to the river. What do you think?
Mayorga: I never gave it much thought. My mother would try to scare us, I guess, "That the llorona’s gonna get you, behave." But I never knew what the llorona was, so it didn’t bother me. I figured if I can’t see it, it can’t hurt me. But you heard all those sayings from years ago.
Muñoz: That’s so true. Tell me a little bit about the Monterey Club.
Mayorga: Well, Joe . . . Sanchez was the one that started it. It was just started, a small group, to have something for the teenagers to do. It sponsored dances. They had queens. What was her name? Beautiful Mary? God, she lived on the corner. She was queen one year.
Muñoz: Mary Navarro?
Mayorga: Yeah, Mary Navarro. I think she was queen. They had picnics. Whole families would get together then, like the Melendezes had a huge truck, and they donated. Families, the young ones and old ones, would climb in the back of the truck, and we’d go down to Oak Creek and picnic all day. Everybody took food and you mingled, and it was nice.
Muñoz: Yeah, sounds like it.
Mayorga: He coordinated a real good group. They had a drill team that Mrs. Killip taught.
Muñoz: A drill team?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: Oh wow.
Mayorga: They had white uniforms with white caps. I have a picture of Socorro, her and the Delgados, sitting on some post with a flag on it. I have no idea where they took that picture. I had a black-and-white of it. But they had a drill team. I remember that Mrs. Killip was the instructor, and they marched at that dance. They’d have good dances, they’d bring the regular players, and it was all family oriented. Like I tell you, the whole family went: the mother with the little kids and everything went to the dances then. But it was nice, and they had a lot of stuff goin’ for the younger kids.
Muñoz: Sounds like it was. So that was just the people within that community, huh, that would be the ones going down to these picnics?
Mayorga: Well, the Mexican people congregated mostly from the tracks-down this way it was all Mexican, more or less.
Muñoz: And I was going to ask you, did you ever socialize with the people-okay, let’s say the Calaveras, Los Chantes, La Plaza Vieja?
Mayorga: I went to the Chantes a lot, and hated it.
Muñoz: Why?
Mayorga: Because I wasn’t treated nice by the people there, because I didn’t go to school with them.
Muñoz: Oh! Okay.
Mayorga: My mother had my tia, Liboria’s mother, grandmother or whatever she was-my aunt anyway. She used to scold me every time she saw me at work at Babbitts. I hadn’t done anything yet, but she scolded me. She was great. She was really a great grandma. Then Lupe Espinos there. And Lencha. Oh my God, my mom and dad had friends galore up there.
Muñoz: In the Chantes huh?
Mayorga: And we’d go there on Sundays. Well Socorro, she knew all the Alonzos and everybody, you know. I didn’t know anybody.
Muñoz: How many years difference between you and Socorro?
Mayorga: Four. And then she was going to training school and they sent her to South Beaver. And then they kept me there, so I didn’t mingle with the other kids. I had a guy that was so mean he’d throw rocks at me when he passed by the training school and I was out on the playground.
Muñoz: Well he liked you!
Mayorga: What was his last name? They were fighters. I never knew, just in catechism, you know. That’s the only way I knew the kids, was in catechism.
Muñoz: And catechism was where?
Mayorga: At Our Lady of Guadalupe, Father Albouy used to come and teach us. I loved him. He was good. He was strict, very strict. But I don’t know. I was very partial to him. I really liked him a lot, and he was very nice to me.
Muñoz: That would be understandable.
Mayorga: And then about that time Mother would send me to go get baptismal records of this and that because the sisters wanted to come back to the United States, so I was always running errands for Mother, doing things like that, so I’d go talk to Father Albouy. And then he taught catechism, so [unclear].
Muñoz: I don’t know about Nativity, but I’ve never-I mean I’ve asked about any records at Our Lady of Guadalupe, and they don’t seem to find records at Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Mayorga: They don’t?! Father Albouy had everything that I ever asked for, and they were ancient records.
Muñoz: There’s been so many changes of priests at Our Lady of Guadalupe [unclear], so many.
Mayorga: Father Gomez came and made empanadas with us. He just had a ball, because it’s a tradition in New Mexico. So he had a ball! He ground meat and everything. He spent the whole Sunday with us. He was very nice. He’d come over to the house and have coffee. And we’d have Father Lindenmeyer all the time, because he liked Socorro and Teeny a lot. He and I could not get along.
Muñoz: You and Father Lindenmeyer? Really?
Mayorga: Well, I had my opinions, and he was very angry at me that I didn’t send my kids to Guadalupe School. I said, "You don’t have a thing to offer them. You set the Mexicans twenty years behind, segregating them. You made the Guadalupe Church and the school." They were being admitted to St. Anthony’s then, because they didn’t allow Mexicans at St. Anthony School for a long time. And they were just getting to where they did, and he builds a school and separates 'em. And then he wanted me to take my kids out of training school. I said, "My kids aren’t going to your school. You haven’t got a thing to offer them." I offered to start a Girl Scout troop. "Girl Scout troop?! That’s ridiculous!" I said, "Fine. I have my Girl Scouts at the training school anyway." He wasn’t interested in developing things that I was interested in having for the kids. And yet, the bus picked up Yoli. She wasn’t ready for school, and he had catechism classes in the summer or something, and he’d have the bus come right for her in front of the house if she’d go. So I let her go, doesn’t hurt her, she’ll learn something. And she fell one time, running, cut her eye. He was just chicken, couldn’t stand to see blood or anything. And so they called me and I said, "Okay, cut her eye? Take her and have stitches." And he was just shaking, he said, "I’ll take her." I said, "Nope, you stay home, I’ll take her. You can’t drive the way you are." (laughter) He liked my mom and Socorro a lot, but him and I, well, we just disagreed about a lot of things. And I got very upset one day because he told me that he would just love to see me when I’m mad. I said, "You don’t know how many times you’ve stepped through that door, Emilio and I aren’t even speaking to each other. But that was none of your business, or anybody else’s but his and mine. And while you were here, you never noticed. Maybe as soon as you walked out, we didn’t speak to each other. But that was between him and me, not you." See, I was very brutal. I’m very blunt. Mother used to get mad, "Don’t be like that." I said, "Mother, I’m going to say what I have to say. I can’t pretend." And so he tolerated me and I tolerated him. Socorro said, "Invite him, he doesn’t have family." "Okay, c’mon over, come for Christmas, Thanksgiving." Have him sprawled on the couch in the living room. He was nice, but we were just different personalities completely.
Muñoz: Yeah, it’s interesting, you say how you liked Father Albouy, where I’ve heard others didn’t care for Father Albouy.
Mayorga: Oh, I know.
Muñoz: And you didn’t like Father Lindenmeyer, and others just loved Father Lindenmeyer.
Mayorga: My mother just worshipped him. And him and I just couldn’t.... And Emilio did a lot of things for him.
Muñoz: And like you mentioned discrimination, it was among the mexicanos themselves. They separated themselves. And I hear that, especially the Chanteros was a whole different type of people.
Mayorga: Oh, you know, we were terrible, because the guys from the Chantes, Rudy Garcia and some of those would dress up on Sundays with suits, and go stand on San Francisco Street. We’d deliberately get dressed up and walk by 'em, and just mock them. Our boys didn’t dress up in suits, they were casual. But here they were, all dolled up, trying to impress the girls. And we would just pass by them, three or four of us that did this, and just kind of snicker.
Muñoz: You were bad!
Mayorga: We were! We didn’t mingle with them, we didn’t know them.
Muñoz: So why’d you do it?
Mayorga: Just to be mean. Young girls don’t have anything better to do.
Muñoz: What age were you?
Mayorga: About twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
Muñoz: So they’d go stand on the street at that early age on San Francisco?
Mayorga: They did, up by town, mostly town, by-well, you didn’t know what Black’s Bar was. What’s in there? Fronske Studio and all that used to be right there. And the girls would walk town, but we weren’t lookin’ for them. They stood out like sore thumbs with the black suits and the white shirts.
Muñoz: The mafia just came in.
Mayorga: But there was a distinction between them and us. Different people, I guess.
Muñoz: And you would consider yourself Plaza Nueva.
Mayorga: I guess so. And I considered myself an outsider because I didn’t fit in the other place, because I didn’t go to the same school. That made a lot of difference.
Muñoz: My mother went to training school too. I have to think back in my mind how snotty she was. (laughs)
Mayorga: And then I used to ride my bike, because we started later, and they’d be in school, and I’d ride my bike. Well, I had about a week extra vacation. So we all kind of just agitated each other.
Muñoz: That question about that goat that chased you home-where were you at, at the time? Are we talking San Francisco Street?
Mayorga: Yeah. Well, you know where the apartments were at Martinez.
Muñoz: The Tourist Home? Okay.
Mayorga: Uh-huh. Well, I’d be coming from the store, and that darned goat would see me and chase me all the way home, just butting me. Oh God, I was scared to death of that thing.
Muñoz: Now, who had the Tourist Home before the Martinezes did?
Mayorga: The españoles, Olga Dominguez. She was a beautiful girl.
Muñoz: Garcia, was that her maiden name?
Mayorga: Dominguez? She hung around with Fannie, and was it with....
Muñoz: Parmida [phonetic]?
Mayorga: No, not Parmida. Parmida wasn’t in that group. It was Fannie and one of the, Nino’s sister.
Muñoz: Nellie?
Mayorga: No, the younger one. Margaret? God, I grew up with them there in our neighborhood. Anyway, they were three girls, Olga and them, and they were really pretty girls, and they went to high school together-and Edith June.
Muñoz: June, yeah.
Mayorga: Edith, remember her?
Muñoz: Uh-huh, the ones around the corner.
Mayorga: They had the laundry originally. And the Nackards. You remember Nila Nackard and them, when they ran the apartments?
Muñoz: Oh yeah. Do you remember them going door-to-door as salesmen?
Mayorga: Oh, selling stuff? Yeah.
Muñoz: Covejeros, that’s what my mom used to call them, covejeros. Maybe they were gitanos, I don’t know.
Mayorga: I don’t know what they were, but they did. They had beautiful little black furniture, stuff like that. I have Emilio’s rocking chair. I have it out in the garage. I had it here, and it had some nails sticking out, and Madeline cut her fingers. And it’s all woven. It’s the woven kind. Maria bought two of them.
Muñoz: From the Nackards?
Mayorga: I don’t know who she bought 'em from, but one was Cecelia’s and one was Emilio's. And I’ve had it for years. I’ve offered it to the kids, and they don’t want it! They’re not sentimental about any of that stuff.
Muñoz: Isn’t that sad, though?! I would think so. I mean, gee, me, myself, I keep everything my parents.... I have my dad’s Navy outfit!
Mayorga: I just cleaned Emilio’s uniform this last year, his ranger uniform. The kids didn’t want it. I thought, "When I die, they’re not going to know what to do with it."
Muñoz: I must have rang at the wrong time, because that’s what I put out at the Day of the Dead-especially for the military people.
Mayorga: I called Billy Weldon, and he said yes, he would take it, because he puts the display at the library every so often. So he took it. Emilio was cremated, so he wasn’t buried in the uniform or anything. And I’ve had it ever since he got discharged. It’s gonna rot. I’ve had it in my cedar chest, and it was beautiful-the cap, everything. So I asked the boys, nobody wanted it. So I thought what do I do? I was cleaning out. I’m trying to leave as little mess for the kids as I can. I called Billy Weldon and he came and he said, "Oh, I’ll be so happy to have it, Lucy." So he took it. Because I figured they have parades, maybe somebody doesn’t have a uniform to wear or something like that. Somebody can use it on the line.
Muñoz: That’s blowing me away. Vince’s dad, Paul [Lopez], he really fits into his uniform. I’m like, "My God, he fits right in there," because we have that veterans’ parade, and then we give the military, the veterans, a picnic. So he was in his uniform, and he fits right in it.
Mayorga: Neat!
Muñoz: It is, it is. I have my dad’s navy outfit, the blues. I wore out his whites. When I was a kid growing up, I used to wear his whites.
Mayorga: I have the kind of [soft?] gray [unclear]. We wore out the blankets, because those blankets were really neat. We used to have the military blankets.
Muñoz: Nice and warm, huh?
Mayorga: The kids didn’t want anything. They’re not savers. And I used to save everything. I had a beautiful saint that I’m sorry I gave some to Nino de Atocha. The body, it was my great-grandma’s. And I had it in Cottonwood. Emilio had made me a real nice shelf for it and everything. I had it here in Flagstaff for years. My mom gave it to me. And then I came here and I thought, "I don’t want to make holes in this house. There’s nothing behind these walls. There’s no lumber behind these darned walls." So I had it on the floor for ages, and then I asked Margaret, my sister-in-law. She said, "Oh, my sister in Mexico would love it!" I said, "Well, take it." But it was the body, and it had the [esceplar?] here, and the whole.... Just beautiful. And Mother had woven some palms. I don’t know how she wove them, real pretty, in there. And I had that thirty years or so.
Muñoz: But I understand what you’re saying. Well, that concludes my oral history.
Mayorga: Well thank you.
Muñoz: [unclear] for the conversation and other stuff here.
Mayorga: I really enjoyed reminiscing.
Muñoz: It is fun, isn’t it?
Mayorga: I don’t have anybody here to reminisce. The kids don’t remember anything. And they wonder why I want to remember that stuff.
Muñoz: I think it’s just so important, I really do.
Mayorga: Well, it’s history!
Muñoz: Not only that, it’s a legacy you’re going to leave for your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren. I mean, finally they’ll be able to say, "Oh, that was my Grandma Mayorga!" And you might be great-great-great-great, how many greats-grandmas times have you been, yeah. And your kids don’t have anything to pass down.
Mayorga: Well like me, see, I hardly remember my mother’s side of the family, because they went to Mexico. I knew my grandpa for a week. He came from California, and I wasn’t working or anything, so I took him all around, and I took him to Leboria, because he was her uncle. So there, and I just took him different places that he wanted to see. So I got to know my grandpa. My grandma, I knew her for one day in California. My aunts I’ve seen twice. When I went to California, we were on vacation, Emilio, the kids, and I. And then when my grandma died, we went for the funeral, my mom and I. I didn’t want Mother to go alone, so I went with her. And I met my uncles and my aunts. I don’t remember them when they went to Mexico. I was little. And I have no history with them. You know, let’s put it this way, it doesn’t bother me whether I see them or not, because I don’t know anything about them, it’s not a family. And here, with my dad’s side, my Tia Concha, oh my God, we were in each other’s house all the time. And yet I have my Tia Manuela. I don’t know if you remember her.
Muñoz: Manuela....
Mayorga: Lucero. She was my dad’s sister. They were just the three of them that survived. My aunt and my uncle had a restaurant on San Francisco Street, right by where the laundry used to be, right next.... Remember where Pablito Martinez had his store?
Muñoz: Yes.
Mayorga: Okay, that used to be a restaurant that my aunt used to run there before. And so we never mingled too much. They were too busy, or they just weren’t close. And then they moved to California during the war. And they’d come and they’d stay with my mother. But by then I was in high school and I wasn’t close to 'em, I wasn’t interested in a, you know, relationship then. And I’m sorry now, because I’m sure that they would have known a lot of history for my daddy.
Muñoz: Sure.
Mayorga: My dad remembered a lot. He had a good memory. And he had a lot of tall tales to tell. I used to laugh, because I have a picture of him, just a beautiful picture of him in his uniform. And I had it on top on my mantle in the fireplace. I had him when he had the shingles so bad, poor thing. I’d take him home with me, and he’d sit there and he’d look at the picture and he’d grin. "Oh, honey, I could tell you tales!," he’d tell me. I’d say, "Tell me, Daddy, tell me." "Oh no, honey. No mija." (laughter) Emelio says, "Your dad told me so many things, honey, he wouldn’t tell [you]." I said, "Well, tell me!" "Uh-uh, I promised him I wouldn’t tell." So he never would tell me what my daddy told him. But he could tell jokes. I mean, one joke after another! And Mother would have fits with him, "Behave, Frank! Behave, Frank!" But he was full of joy. Mother was always the more serious one. And I don’t know who I took after, but I could work like Daddy around any [unclear]. He had a real happy side. And Mother was always very serious. I guess life was harder for her, I don’t know.
Muñoz: No telling. But you say your dad was from Concho, Arizona, huh?
Mayorga: Uh-huh.
Muñoz: But was born in New Mexico?
Mayorga: I don’t really remember, to tell you the truth. But they came from there. They were, like he said, the second Mexican family here in Flagstaff, and they had to stay over on that side because it was flooded. They had to stay there three days before the flood receded, and then they came up. And I don’t know whether they settled on San Francisco Street.... No, they bought the lot from-him and Mother were gonna get married. Fifty dollars, can you believe it?
Muñoz: On San Francisco, that lot right there.
Mayorga: Where they lived.
Muñoz: So when he first came, where was his first house?
Mayorga: I don’t know.
Muñoz: Socorro would have, huh?
Mayorga: No, Mother married Dad when Socorro was three. I know one year-they teased me-one year they lived at Tuba City, my mom and my dad, in a tent! He was working for the electric lights. They lived in a tent over there, because they had a lot of Indian friends. Oh God, they’d bring fruit in the summertime, and I knew what that meant! Canning and canning, preserves!
Muñoz: [unclear]
Mayorga: And you know, nothing but hot stoves, and they didn’t have the Sure-Jell or anything. You stirred fruit all day long! But it was so good. Mom made all the preserves and pears and syrup and everything. But they lived in Tuba City for a year, and then they used to tease me because they said I was born over there. I said, "I wasn’t born over there!" But they’d tell me, "Yeah, you’re part Indian, Lucy." (laughter) So they’d tease me I was born in Tuba. I know I wasn’t. My birth certificate is here. But they teased me all the time. Daddy was telling me, oh my God, Delia, I could tell you stories [unclear]. Oh Lord! But he had a real good sense of humor. He really did. Mother was the more serious one. I had a boyfriend who gave me a pen and pencil set for Christmas one time, and I wasn’t supposed to have a boyfriend. So I told Daddy, "I got somethin’, Daddy, but I can’t take it...." I didn’t have any place to hide anything inside the house. Socorro and I shared a chest of drawers. He said, "What is it, honey?" I said, "Well, I got this nice pen and pencil set from a boyfriend." "I’ll hide it for you, honey." So he hid it in the garage.
Muñoz: So who was more strict-your mom?
Mayorga: Oh God yes! You didn’t ask Mom twice. I could ask Dad once and hug and kiss him and, "Okay, mija, you can go." (laughter) "Jenny, let her go. What’s wrong?"
Muñoz: Let me mention, your brother was the Flagstaff city manager.
McGlothlin: Frank, yes, I remember that. I guess we’re out of time on this tape. Just went to the very end of both tapes. That’s good.